5 random things that happened on this day, January 13th, in showbiz history
1939 Son of Frankenstein, the third in Universal's Frankenstein franchise and the last to star Boris Karloff, opens in theaters. It was successful but given the lack of James Whale behind the camera, not as well remembered as its predecessors
1989 It was an odd January dump on this Friday the 13th...
The sci-fi horror flick DeepStar Six, the John Travolta comedy The Experts, the Christian Slater skateboarding mystery Gleaming the Cube, and the Kevin Kline / Susan Sarandon crime comedy The January Man all opened. Does anyone remember the existence of these films. Better yet, have you seen one of them?
2006 Did you know that Shelley Winters got married on her death bed? To make this historical actress trivia even more memorable, Oscar-nominated Sally Kirkland (who had been friends with Shelley for decades) officiated the ceremony! Winters had been with her partner Gerry DeFord for nearly two decades but her daughter had objected to a marriage. Ten hours after the wedding the two-time Oscar winner passed away at the age of 85.
2008 The 65th Annual Golden Globe Awards were held. Sort of. Or rather they were not held but announced on TV like a news conference, due to the WGA strike. So it's very difficult to remember that Atonement (Drama) and Sweeney Todd (Musical or Comedy) both won that year. Oscar would feel differently a month or so later and give their Best Picture prize to No Country For Old Men.
As in so many mythic Best Actress years the Globes outcome didn't help with Oscar predictions since both frontrunners were announced as winners: Julie Christie (Away from Her) and Marion Cotillard (La Vie En Rose) won Best Actress in a Drama and Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy respectively. Nowadays that outcome wouldn't happen since they are no longer (usually) considering films about musicians to be "musicals" (see Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star is Born recently).
2013 The 70th Golden Globes Awards unspool with Argo and Les Misérables taking the Best Picture prizes for Drama and Musical respectively. The Globes and Oscars aren't usually this in sync but for the 2012 film year every single winner all the way down to Best Original Song (barring the "Musical or Comedy" specific prizes of course which Oscar doesn't have) repeated their wins at the Oscars EXCEPT Ben Affleck in Best Director since he was famously "snubbed" by the Directors branch for Argo.
Tommy Lee Jones became a very popular meme that night
This was also the night that when Jodie Foster with her sort of coming out and sort of retiring speech and Tommy Lee Jones with his grumpy face both broke the internet.
Today's Birthday Suit
Happy 56th birthday to 80s geek film star (pictured here in 1988's Some Girls) turned 00s heartthrob Patrick Dempsey (pictured here in 2016's Bridget Jones's Baby) who has aged in a way that is deeply unfair to the rest of humanity. He is now sporting silver fox hair because of course he is.
Other showbiz birthdays on this day:
Legendary dancer Gwen Verdon (Sweet Charity), Golden age goddess Kay Francis (Trouble in Paradise, Stolen Holiday), Oscar nominee Robert Stack (Written on the Wind, Airplane!), underrated MVP Michael Peña (Ant-Man, Crash), TV goddess Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep, Seinfeld), Japan's Masayuki Mori (Rashomon, The Bad Sleep Well), Orlando Bloom (Lord of the Rings, Carnival Row), Ruth Wilson (The Affair, His Dark Materials), Brandon P Bell (Dear White People), Liam Hemsworth (Hunger Games), comic actor Rip Taylor (Gong Show), Penelope Ann Miller (The Artist, Adventures in Babysitting), Natalia Dyer (Stranger Things), Janet Hubert (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), Director Euzhan Palcy (A Dry White Season), Julian Morris (Once Upon a Time, Man in An Orange Shirt), 80s kid star Keith Coogan (Adventures in Babysitting, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead), Broadway star Frances Sternhagen (Misery, E.R.), Writer/director Alice Winocur (Disorder, Proxima), Oscar winning editor Mark Sanger (Gravity), TV titan Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Bridgerton), singer/radio star Sophie Tucker, and the late gossip columnist Army Archerd.